Fall2020

Part One presents the content of the Birth’s metaphysics whilst Part Two
shows why this metaphysics must be understood in a particular mythopoetic
sense. Part Three then exposes an irreconcilable problem with the Birth’s
project and demonstrates that resolving it naturally points one towards
positions held by the later Nietzsche.
1 - Metaphysics of Tragedy:
It bears remembering that the Birth of Tragedy is in fact concerned with
discussing the birth of tragedy. The metaphysics that permeates the work
is inexorably intertwined with this question, and any reproduction of it
should not detach it from this concern. At the centre of this picture is a
duality of fundamental artistic “drives” and their characteristic artworks -
the “Apollonian” and the “Dionysian” (BT §1) 3 - with tragedy involving an
interplay between the two (BT §5).
The Apollonian concerns the presentation of individuated figures that,
whilst carrying with them a feeling of “complete intelligibility,” are recognised
as mere ‘semblances’ or representations, and always understood as
being distinct from the spectator. The pleasure in Apollonian art is the cool
contemplation and understanding one experiences wandering through
a portrait gallery, expressing an “imperturbable trust” in the ‘principle of
individuation’, the way the world appears as a collection of differentiated
objects – this includes both you and I, understood as fundamentally separate
beings. Consequently, it is associated with arts that involve the presentation
of images and symbols, and with the “art world” of the “dream” (BT §1). It is
on the stage that we find the Apollonian aspects of tragedy, the actors representing
the exploits of gods and heroes (BT §8).
The Dionysian, in stark contrast, does not concern the presentation of
anything understood as distinct from the spectator, but rather ‘losing oneself’
in a kind of delirious state, a fusion of “enormous horror” and “blissful
ecstasy” when one thinks they are experiencing a breakdown of individuation.
In the Dionysiac experience, like the delirium of dancing at a club, “all the
rigid, hostile barriers [...] established between human beings break asunder,”
and one feels themselves to belong to a “primal unity,” a “higher community
with all of nature”. At its apex, one’s individuated subjectivity ‘vanishes’ “to
the point of complete self-forgetting” – from the perspective of the reveller,
there is no separation between them and others, nor really a ‘them’ or ‘others’
at all anymore. Consequently it is associated primarily with arts that,
like music, don’t involve the presentation of images, and the “art world” of
“intoxication” (BT §1). The Dionysian appears within tragedy in the form
of the chorus, a group of singers that sang dithyrambic hymns narrating the
events on stage (BT §7).
It is essential though that we understand these drives “as artistic powers
which erupt from nature itself”. Here lies the significance of those ‘art-worlds’
of the dream and intoxication – nature, in giving rise to these states, automatically
produces Apollonian and Dionysian experiences. When a human
intentionally creates art work they don’t simply produce it from nowhere
but reproduce the character of these art-worlds - hence “every artist is an
‘imitator’” (BT §2). This process is described as one in which the ‘original
subjectivity’ of the artist melts away as they become a “medium” through
which the real creative force, distinctly other to us, is ‘channelled’ (BT §5):
we are not one and identical with the essential being which gives
itself eternal pleasure as the creator and spectator of that comedy of
art. Only insofar as the genius, during the act of artistic procreation,
merges fully with that original artist of the world does he know anything
of the eternal essence of art (Ibid).
3 Translated by R. Spiers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
116 117